Plan B - Custom vs Bespoke CMS and Website solution

[eek]

Also £100 is quite excessive, I am considering trialling it on a 1&1 Windows Virtual Server with 4GB guaranteed RAM... £30/month

Why pay. Amazon AWS will give you enough free low spec boxes to run a .net solution for free for a year.

[lilelvis2000]

Sign up for BizSpark and I think you get a Azure server for free as well. Windows Azure Platform

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Why pay. Amazon AWS will give you enough free low spec boxes to run a .net solution for free for a year.

I love Amazon but this site has confused the hell out of me.....

[camfish]

...There are so many routes to take to get this i.e. technology. PHP/MySQL or SQL/.NET and bespoke or get open source solution and tailor it....

How about using Django? I've just started reading up on it while I keep the bench warm, and it looks promising.

[DieScum]

Depends on exactly what kind of site it is. If it's just a small site for a business knock it up on wordpress. Download a theme for $40 and you're set.

If you need to do backend coding I would highly recommend google app engine hosting with code in python (or java if you want) and frontend using one of the popular css frameworks like twitter bootstrap.

If you can code in another language you'll learn python quickly and if you've never used it before you'll probably fall in love.

App engine is free to start with and you only need to pay if your usage goes over a threshold and even then it's cheap. I've got some sites where I just use the free account (main drawback is it takes a couple of extra seconds to load if nobody has visited for a while and it has to spin the instance up) for sites that need better performance I pay $10 or so a month and the instance is always up.

Amazon AWS might be a good idea as well. I've never used it just because google works so well but it's a good skillset to pick up from the infrastructure as well as coding side even if your plan B doesn't take off.

[DieScum]

How about using Django? I've just started reading up on it while I keep the bench warm, and it looks promising.

You should get on to the udacity.com python courses. Great way to learn.

[BlasterBates]

I would recommend MySql, Php. I would also make your site custom. There are plenty of examples on the Internet where CSS style sheets, javascript. and html can be down loaded.

Free Templates - WebsiteTemplatesOnline

One of the nice things about php and mysql is that it is supported everywhere by providers.

I´m looking to build websites and I think it is the way to go. Another option is Java J2EE, for example Apache Tomcat.

[doodab]

By doing this you are promote yourself and let other people know about your pure awesomeness.

Awesome.

[Sysman]

Also £100 is quite excessive, I am considering trialling it on a 1&1 Windows Virtual Server with 4GB guaranteed RAM... £30/month

Agreed that £100 per month is excessive.

I am currently paying £210 a year for a Unix based hosting service with decent support. It's plenty and then some for Plan B stuff.

[Sysman]

How about using Django? I've just started reading up on it while I keep the bench warm, and it looks promising.

I keep getting that as a suggestion. Are there any quick start packages suitable for a beginner available?